Business is good! You really think I should continue my marketing efforts?

I’ve written about this before, but there are only 2 types of dealers:

1. Market-Driven Dealers. Their success is almost strictly dependent upon their market, location, and having a hot OEM in a good economy. This is where a lot of dealers are right now… especially on the metric side. Business grows outside of their control, so they can’t replicate it, which leaves them extremely vulnerable.

2. Marketing-Driven Dealers. This type of dealer controls (and therefore creates) their own success by marketing to their buying base with the right media and good message every single month. I’ll jump into the buying base subject below.

While there’s no denying a great economy, a great location and a hot OEM make a difference, being a Marketing-Driven dealer is still the way to go. In fact, the best combination is to be a Marketing-Driven Dealer with a hot OEM when the market is booming! The challenge is you can’t control the economy. There are peaks and there are valleys. And no dealer can impact the national popularity of the OEM they sell. You can hope these things work in your favor, but hope is not a strategy.

My favorite of the seven habits is the first one… Be Proactive. It’s all about taking responsibility for your life. You see, life doesn’t just happen. Whether you know it or not, your life is completely designed by you. The choices, after all, are yours. You choose happiness. You choose sadness. You choose decisiveness. You choose ambivalence. You choose success. You choose failure. You choose courage. You choose fear. Every moment, every situation, provides a new choice. And in doing so, it gives you the perfect opportunity to do things differently to produce more positive results.

Unsuccessful people really struggle with that concept. I mean, they would never choose to be unhappy or unsuccessful, so it must be something or somebody else’s fault. Business is like this too… we get to choose our actions, good or bad, but our choices have consequences, good or bad. All of the problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas. The Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence.

The Circle of Concern represents all the things over which a person has little or no control, but yet impacts their life. Unsuccessful people focus their time and energy here. They must find something to complain about! Again, they’d never choose to be unhappy or unsuccessful, so their ‘bad luck’ could never be their fault. Here’s a word to the wise… if you can’t change it, MOVE ON!

The Circle of Influence represents all the things in your life that you CAN do something about. This is where successful people focus their time and energy. It just so happens that marketing falls in this area. That’s why you’ve got to make the decision to consistently market to the right people using the right media with a good message, and this is being a Marketing-Driven Dealer.

It starts with your buying base. As a refresher, these are the folks who live close to your dealership and fall into 3 buckets:

1) Active Customers – these guys have spent money with your store in the last 12 months.

2) Inactive Past Customers – they’re past customers, but they haven’t spent money with you the last 12 months.

3) Conquest Prospects – these are the enthusiasts who live in your top-performing zip codes, but they’ve never spent money with your dealership.

The majority of your sales over the next 12-months will come from these 3 groups, and the key is consistently staying in front of them, so YOU earn their business when they begin to shop.

Our new Bullseye program is designed to scientifically go after these folks and give them a reason to respond, provide their name, email address, phone number and tell you what they’re most interested in purchasing right now. Then, our staff picks up the phone and calls to set appointments for your sales team so you can sell more units and make more money!

We also utilize our Onboarding System to identify which customers are viewing inventory on your website, email them an approved buy-back offer, and our internal Call Center makes live calls to these folks too.

I’ve got more to share with you about our Bullseye program and how it predictably grows your sales. For more information give me a shout at 1-877-242-4472 or visit www.psmmarketing.com.

- Tory

P.S. Want to submit YOUR question for “Ask Tory”? Just email your question to marketing@powersportsmarketing.com and let Tory know what question you’d like to have answered in a future issue of the UMM Newsletter.